artbreak™ is an offering by Arete Institute, which has organized extraordinary seminars and sabbatical experiences in the spectacular setting of Prague since 2001.The Institute is dedicated to fostering creativity, inspired leadership and personal growth through transformative interchanges with exceptional teachers. Arete’s seminar and vacation experiences take as their guiding inspiration the emerging scienfic understanding of the social and biological foundations of maximum human fulfillment – intellectual challenge, artistic expression, and physical wellness.
Arete Institute’s managing directors are Douglas Pressman, Ph.D. and Richard Furych, MBA. A Montana native, Dr. Pressman holds a doctorate in sociology from Brown University and an MBA from American Graduate School of International Management. He moved to Prague in 1996 and has taught university courses and executive seminars internationally since 1996. He is a certified instructor of the creativity course taught at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Richard Furych, a Czech citizen,
is a 1997 MBA graduate of the Czech Management Center, where he studied with Dr. Pressman. He has had senior leadership positions with international corporations and is a management consultant based from Prague.

I want to offer my sincere congratulations on the unique and stimulating Creativity Seminar you presented for my staff last week. Thank you again. I look forward to working with you in the future. I plan to encourage other international and Czech companies here to consider Arete’s unique seminars.

– Richard Steffens, Commercial
Counselor, U.S. Embassy Prague,
March 14, 2005

I am really grateful for what I learned about myself in the Authentic Leadership seminar. I got a lot of inspiration to work with from during those three challenging days. It surpassed all expectations. The seminar leaders were fabulous. Many, many thanks.

– Michele Moran, Finance and Business
sector head for the Czech Republic,
European Union (EU), June 22, 2003